“I never use ‘policeman’ for a dime when I can get ‘cop’ for a nickel.”

When pressed, I explain that - at least to me - Twain’s talking about efficiency and economy, talking about the need of the artist to get out of the way of his or her work. He’s cautioning against self-indulgence, something that every artist in every medium must guard against. The worst thing a storyteller can do is believe that he is more important than the story being told.

But I’ve said it so often, it’s starting to sound a little hollow, even to me.

Then I pick up some of Stan Sakai’s work, I read a tale of Usagi and Gen, and the truth of it comes back - the essence of storytelling, and perhaps even the essence of capital-A Art, is honesty. The resonance of the image, the power of the story, the emotional connection the audience makes with the work, all of it lives or dies on the basis of its honesty. Set your story in the far-flung reaches of the universe with great quantum-drive battle cruisers, set it in a superheroic nihilistic future, hell, set it in feudal Japan with your cast portrayed as anthropomorphized rhinos and rabbits - it doesn’t matter as long as the story is fundamentally honest.

Because there are things we all share. We’ve all been cold, we’ve all been hungry. We’ve all been betrayed, if not all of us on a grand scale. We’ve all loved.

We’ve all lost.

The best storyteller can hold those truths in one hand, and conjure the tale in the other. The best storyteller can mesh them seamlessly, creating a connection with his audience that at once is both fantastic and absolutely real. In the ideal, a tale is told that resonates long after the last word is read, the last image viewed.

Stan Sakai...Stan Sakai not only does this, but he does it consistently, issue after issue, executing with elegance and economy the epic of Usagi Yojimbo. This collection is Sakai at his best - not a word out of place, not a brush stroke laid in error.

Disguised as an adventure story of the most elementary kind - what can be more basic than a chase, after all? - Grasscutter II is so much more. From the foreshadowing prologue to the haunting first epilogue, Sakai teases out themes in word and image that first propel the narrative, then move the heart. His language, both in text and image, is succinct, deft, and ever-precise.

Nothing in these pages is wasted.

In an age of self-indulgence, where more and more comics and their creators are enamored of flash and image, Stan Sakai never stands in the way of his own work. When we as a profession seem to be moving both forward and back all at the same time, that may be the highest praise anyone can offer.

Enjoy your journey to Atsuta.

Abayo!

GREG RUCKA
PORTLAND, OREGON
DECEMBER, 2001

“Usagi Yojimbo” and "Space Usagi", including all prominent characters featured in the stories and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of Stan Sakai and Usagi Studios. Usagi Yojimbo is a registered trademark of Stan Sakai.  Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric content, is coincidental.